For over a year now, the comics world has watched DC’s New 52 and paid careful attention to what it brought to the industry. Would the influx of new readers stay on long term? Would the changes made to the continuity/characters stick? Could they avoid the traps of the past?

And, most importantly: What will Marvel’s response be?

Well, it took a little longer than I thought it would, but bam! There it is: Marvel Now!

Now aside from the first-year-marketing-student title, the Marvel Now! re-whateveryouwannacallit has the potential to have a similar reception to the New 52.

By that I mean, everyone will say they hate it then buy 5 copies of it.

There are a lot of aspects of Marvel Now! that I really like. The creative teams they’ve got on their flagship books are top notch. I like that they are rolling it out over a 5-month period. I like that Bendis has finally, FINALLY found a way to shoehorn Rocket Raccoon back into our lives.

What I don’t like though is everyone pretending this is something new and different. Marvel Now! (I swear, it sounds like a promo film for a timeshare in Ft. Lauderdale) is exactly what Marvel (and any other comics pubisher) does every time a big event wraps up. From The Initiative to Dark Reign to The Heroic Age, new “eras” in comics are pretty clock work. While I don’t think that its necessarily a bad thing, I do think trotting out the dog and pony show as if we are re-inventing the wheel is a bit much. Especailly considering how far Marvel seem to be bending over backwards to declare it something new, but not new, which I’m sure won’t confuse people at all.

In my opinion, the DC relaunch was something different. They took almost everything they had and rolled the dice with it. You can debate as long as you have breath as to it being a success or not, but the bottom line is it was ballsy. Marvel Now! to me seems to be trying to capitalize on that ballsiness but not actually follow through with it.

Change is inevitable in comics, but what I think jades people the most is the marketing machine that tries to tell us it’s something other that what it is.

Rus Wooton is a comic creator best known for his lettering work on THE GUTTERS and books like THE WALKING DEAD, INVINCIBLE, BUTCHER BAKER and countless others from Marvel, Image, Dark Horse and Radical. An artist for as long as he can remember, Rus got degrees in Fine Arts and Art Education from the University of South Florida in 1996 and then went into freelancing, then working as Wizard’s web designer for three years, then to freelancing again. He’s been lettering since 2003 and draws and writes whenever he can. He is fueled by coffee, Dr Pepper, spicy Korean noodles and rock ‘n’ roll.